Richard, Thomas

Tzahal on screen: “The heroes are tired” - 2019.


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Tzahal very early on imposed itself as something to be filmed. Presented as the embodiment of Israeli society and of the new Jew that Zionism sought to construct, its representations in film first of all built a virile, heroic model, both in Israel and abroad, which becomes brutality for its adversaries. However, the trauma of the 1973 war and this model’s loss of meaning in the face of the challenges that confronted Israeli society gradually led to a renewal of these representations. In tune with the evolution of Israeli cinema, there began to be representations of the army that highlighted the rifts and the violence of which the soldiers are the culprits or the victims, as well as a complex relationship between the filmmakers’ memories of the armed forces and their mistrust of militarism. The army remains an emblem of Israel, but its contrasting representations are an invitation to reflect on the influence of these images on the political imaginary.